B-52 From Captain Sim Released

Mark's Secret to Improving your FSX FPS... Compress!

Also: TileProxy Revisited

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Honolulu International From FSDreamTeam

Honolulu International is a scenery developed for Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX) and Flight Simulator 2004 (FS9). It's has been created with great attention to visual quality and performance, using the latest available programming techniques, both in FSX and FS9.

The product is sold as 2 Products in One. This means, by buying one version, you will automatically get the other for free, since activation and serial codes are shared between FSX and FS9.

Features:

Fully customized ground and runways in high resolution, both in FSX and FS9

Ground terrain seamlessly integrated with Flight Simulator.

Native animated inverse-kinematics based jetways in FSX.

AES support in FS9 planned

Animated custom ground vehicles.

Use of the advanced material properties in FSX, like bump and specular mapping.

Fully 3d taxiways lighting.

Intensive use of LOD techniques in order to offer the best possible performances.

X-Plane's Austin Meyer wants to build a REAL plane!

X-Plane is doing well, but I want to see if I can push the current state of the art in HARDWARE forward a little bit as well. IF I can come up with a new plane that can benefit the aviation community, then I want to. To do this, I give you the "Laminar Research X-1 Cavallo" ("Cavallo" is Italian for "Horse").

The Objectives:

1: Design the plane I want to build by flying models of the above in X-Plane, submitted by multiple learned sources.

2: Build it and fly it hither and yon across the country for personal, business, evaluation, and marketing purposes, documenting it and blogging about it like hell.

3: Present the plane to the public in as much detail as possible. As I use the plane for everyday travel, document this travel for the world to see, and demonstrate the aircraft performance to as many people as possible, I will decide whether it could profitable to make more of them. Interest from other people will help drive this decision. Full documentation on the plane and unfettered home-built flying of the plane will help drive this.

4: Build more of them as a home-built operation. I would establish a small factory at a little-used airport in South Carolina and bring people in to build their planes on-site. Professional staff would build 49% of the plane, the customer the other 51%. All parts, jigs, tools, and staff would be in-house the moment the customer shows up. He would live at the facility and work along an assembly-line to build his plane under guidance... and then fly it home when done.

A new Google Earth 3D engine for your sim

One of the projects we work on is called GEVision. In the past various attempts had been made to use Google Earth scenery instead of the one included in Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Yet due to limitations in the interface technology this has never been fully achieved. GEVision will enable the use of Google Earth as a full blown 3D scenery engine.

Eventually GEVision will be a server / client solution that can connect to a wide range of applications rendering Google Earth views to multiple monitors. GEVision is already working smoothly with Microsoft Flight Simulator X and we hope to be demonstrate it in all it's glory on the Google IO conference.

Why Fly – New Webzine About Flying

A brand new, on-line, commercial 'web-zine' has been born. Conceived, designed and ultimately produced and launched by some friends and people many of us know (Hal Bryan and Mike Singer, both fromer MSFS gurus)! It is called Why Fly and is all about WHY we/you love FLYING (and aviation).

Recommendations

Chris: One Six Right: Great Aviation Film, Free on Hulu. (Sorry Non-US Folks, find more information on how to get this movie from their website.)

E-Mails and Voicemails

A quick way to add monitors

love the show guys. I found this on tiger direct, thought it was worth a look. I did not order one yet but will soon I hope. I'll let you know if it works out well. I'm thinking of using it for a panel display for a home cockpit. Don't think it would be good for the main view, but for gauges I think it may work out.

3D Monitors?

Hey guys -- quick question: I had a conversation with a person who recently tried playing half-life on a 3-D monitor. She said it was unbelievable. Has anyone tried this, and if so, does it make a significant difference for FS?

3D TV's were the big story at CES this year, and I wonder if it will be the next big thing in gaming.

Thanks, Dave in Raleigh

Gear Down FS Training Videos

My name is Mike, I go by the alias of NBGZerO. I'm part of the three man group known as GearDownFS that uploaded the FSX pattern video on youtube. We are great fans of your work, and enjoy listening to your episodes, since we are very interested in whats happening in the FS community. We'd like to thank you for your hard work, and wish you good luck for 2010.

For reasons, which are unknown to me, one of us checked your Website and found our video on it. You can guess how we both almost freaked out, since we never thought that one of our videos would be posted on an established FS website. We are in the process of creating a community based platform, dedicated to show interested FS newcomers how to fly "as real as it gets". We strive to create a video series that is straight forward and easy to understand.

Having our video on your website shows us, that we are going the right way, and encourages us to work even harder. Ironically, the third team member and creator of said video is unaware at this point in time - hes on a skiing vacation in Europe.

On behalf of the entire team, I'd like to thank you. Really, thank you very much :)

Landing with gear up!

Did you read the news paper story about the pilot that landed his plane but forgot to put down the landing gear. Perhaps Mark or Danton would like to critic that one. Actually I have done that in the SIMS... Thank goodness I'm not a real pilot.